Thursday, April 23, 2015

Paul Thek at Mai 36

Paul Thek at Mai 36
(link)

Interestingly the PR connects Thek to Beuys. Both with art as components modular to a mythologizing practice. Beuys used the language of mass promotion, affinity for design, multiples and dissemination into pop culture. Thek used traditional art languages and singular (personal) view, always the sovereign work (however economical) and rarely making multiples save for a prototype children's toy. Bueys never seemed conflicted on the oily extraction of aura for himself. Thek instead appears endlessly conflicted about this romanticism, the formal beauty veering close to cliche, triteness, caroming off it, and this tension of when the bird would land is the force of the work, the paradox of being unable to land on the island of “special sweetness and purity” without immediately crushing it with the bludgeon of art, and so a lightness to leave the land alone.